“The poem plays many tricks with perspective” pg 61.
What are those tricks and what effect do they have?
‘The Rape of the Lock’ by Alexander Pope contains many poetic techniques that offer an ironic perspective on eighteenth-century society. The narrative enables the reader to judge the subject of the poem and to appreciate the humour within it. Pope’s use of literacy techniques, such as, comparison, hyperbole and his mock-epic style allow him achieve a positive response from the reader.
The satirical poem forces continuous comparisons between insignificant and significant objects and views. Pope’s use of comparison allows him to present the subject of the poem as something ridiculous, demonstrated in his association of Belinda to the sun at the beginning of Canto II:
“Not with more Glories, in th’Etherial Plain,
The Sun first rises o’er the purpled Main,
Than issuing forth, the Rival of his Beams
Launch’d on the Bosom of the Silver Thames.”
The image is presented as a paradox and so can be taken as a representative of the poem. It also contains an element of the same truth as the line “Belinda smil’d, and all the World was gay.” Pope writes of the importance of Belinda’s beauty and likens her affect and influence to that of the sun. He explains that her she is as “bright as the sun” and that her indiscriminate gaze shines “on all alike”. She is described as the centre of a wonderful solar system of “wits” and “belles”, yet Belinda’s period of brilliance, like the Sun’s, is a strictly limited one, doomed to end. The use of the absurd comparison is not only humorous, but also subtly exploits the superficiality of society. This provides the poem with a light-hearted tone making it easier for the reader to digest the critical message that Pope wishes to convey; that society is too fixated on such trivial things.